Tuesday, May 1, 2012

In support of our ongoing effort to transition the TSFPLTMT's focus to encapsulate a variety of cultural production, we offer to you, dear Viewer and astute cultural critic, a minute of noise from Night of Weirds @ Churchill's in Little Haiti, Miami, FL, late 2011.

We are a dynamic entity. Consider this a peek, or sample, of our shifting role as an institution.
More info forthcoming.

Solomon Graves was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1965 to a family of radical academics and medical physicians. Home schooled from an early age, he lived in the Pacific Northwest during his formative years and spent much of his free time searching through the many thrift shops and antique stores that made up much of Downtown Portland’s commerce during the late 70s and early 80s. He acquired his first Bolex 155 Macrozoom Super-8 film camera in 1973, and quickly began shooting and editing short films documenting the people, places and things surrounding him. At the age of 17, his parents sent him to live and study in Rome, Italy, where his uncle, Giancarlo Angelini Gorrocho, taught fresco painting at the American University. Surrounded by overlapping ages of antiquities and architecture, Solomon Graves kept astonishingly detailed records of the connections between contemporary cultural productions to historical events. It is said by those close to him that his time in Rome was seminal to the genesis of TSFPLTMT.Citta di Roma archives indicate that Solomon Graves was registered to give tours of the catacombs between 1985 and 1995. During this time, his documentation of the world immediately surrounding him reached a feverish pace. With the money he received from the subterranean necropolis tours he led, he began collecting curiosities and ancient religious artifacts from the black market flourishing in Rome during the late 80s and early 90s. Every object he acquired and every film he shot were dutifully mailed away to a storefront address in Portland, where an old friend, Jorg Jakoby, carefully cataloged and stored the growing collection.

Mr. Graves’s growing involvement with the Roman black market’s shady characters led to his arrest in 1993 for unauthorized possession of human remains, which were rumored to belong to 16th century Netherlandish painter Peter Bruegel the Elder. Jailed 5 years for unlicensed trafficking of antiquities, Solomon Graves used the time to research the other fields of study that interested him: Cosmology, physics, astrobiology, the history of surgery in western medicine, among others. He kept regular correspondence with old friends, among them several luminaries of contemporary art, writers, historians, politicians and military personnel.

After his release, Solomon Graves returned to the United States and earned an undergraduate degree in Comparative Temporal Archeology followed by a PhD in Irregular Metaphysics. Following his formal studies, he received a sizable grant from the Truman Foundation and traveled to dozens of points between New York and Beijing researching connections between historical events, art, literature, medicine, biology, engineering, politics, botany, etc, and their cultural productions.

In 2007, The Society for the Preservation of Lost Things and Missing Time was officially formed. Their first exhibit, FLORIDA ARCANE, is currently on view at The Miami Public Library Downtown (Main) Branch.Though his health is not well, Solomon Graves is currently at work on the next exhibit, tentatively titled “Luminoeschatometapoliscosmidron: A World in 3 Parts.” It is estimated to be complete by late 2012.

Monday, May 17, 2010

“The intricacies of how we find ourselves entangled in relationships to countries, nationalities, and people, to locations and to time, and to the ensuing identifications- these aspects continue to be questioned in this work.”

~ Solomon Graves on FLORIDA ARCANE.coming soon to the Miami Dade Public Library

Danny Harold Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper, was convicted for the rape and murder of 4 college students in 1990 and executed in 1994. Before police found him, he hid in a field in Ocala, FL. When police discovered him, he was reading from this book, William Shakespeare’s “Tragedies”.